Investigating students’ views of experimental physics in German laboratory classes

There is a large variety of goals instructors have for laboratory courses, with different courses focusing on subsets goals. An often implicit, but crucial, goal to develop students’ attitudes, views, and expectations about experimental physics align practicing physicists. The assessment upon this one dimension learning has been intensively studied in U.S. institutions using the Colorado Learning Attitudes Science Survey Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). However, there no such an instrument available use Germany, influence students views nature still unexplored at German-speaking institutions. Motivated by lack tool investigate institutions, we present translated version E-CLASS adapted context We call German E-CLASS, GE-CLASS. describe translation process creation automated web-based system assess their courses. also first results GE-CLASS obtained University Potsdam. A comparison between shows clear differences Potsdam beliefs physics.Received 28 January 2022Accepted 16 March 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010135Published American Physical Society under terms Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution work must maintain attribution author(s) published article’s title, journal citation, DOI.Published SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasAssessmentEpistemology, & beliefsInstructional strategiesScientific reasoning problem solvingPhysics Education Research